10 Boston-area communities where home prices have fallen the most
A couple dozen communities in Eastern Massachusetts have bucked the trends.
Home prices went up across the state in September, with the median rising 3 percent to $340,00, up from $330,000 the year before. The biggest increases were in the Boston area, according to real estate market tracker and publisher The Warren Group.
The ongoing shortage of homes for sale has helped drive prices up. The number of listings was 28 percent lower in September compared to the year before, according to the Massachusetts Association of Realtors (MAR).
“Inventory plummeted yet again in September, this time to lows we haven’t seen since the winter of 2015,” said Annie Blatz, 2016 MAR President and branch executive at Kinlin Grover Real Estate in Brewster, in a press release. “So far, buyers have been able to accommodate increasing prices, but the lack of homes for sale could start pricing buyers out of the market.”
But a couple dozen communities in Eastern Massachusetts have bucked the trends. Here, the 10 communities where the median home price has fallen the most in the past year:
Orleans took the biggest hit. There, the median home price fell nearly 11 percent during the first nine months of 2016, to $567,750 from $637,500 the year before, Warren Group stats show. This fits a larger pattern in which home prices have either been falling or remaining flat throughout the year on the Cape, with prices up just 0.6 percent this year in Barnstable County, to $352,000.
In second place in terms of falling home prices: Wayland. Median home prices in the upscale MetroWest suburb dropped 7.7 percent, from $709,500 to $655,000 year-to-date compared to 2015, according to The Warren Group.
Coming in at number three is Rowley, up on the North Shore. Rowley’s median home price dropped 7.5 percent, from $467,000 to $432,000, according to The Warren Group.
Dunstable, up on the New Hampshire border near Nashua, came in number four, after a 7.4 percent drop lowered its median home price from $485,000 to $449,000.
Boxborough, long a popular destination among technology employees out on the 495 corridor, came in at number five, after a nearly 6 percent hit brought its median home price down from $595,000 to $560,000.
Out on the I-95 Boston to Providence corridor, Walpole was number six, with a 5.3 percent decline, from $475,000 to $450,000, Warren Group stats show.
On the Route 2 corridor near Harvard, Shirley was number seven, after a 3.8 percent drop from $306,500 to $295,000.
Townsend (from $258,500 to just under $250,000) and Tyngsboro (from $377,000 to $365,000), two outer suburbs a little to the north near the New Hampshire line, came in numbers eight and nine, after drops of 3.3 percent and 3.2 percent, respectively, according to The Warren Group.
And out on the 495 corridor headed to the Cape to the south of Boston, Middleborough—the town where the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe hopes to build a $1 billion casino—saw its median decline 3.1 percent from $297,250 to $288,000, Warren Group numbers show. Middleborough came in at number 10.
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